


a house on the edge of true

by qwerty



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Community: spook_me, Gen, mystery spots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-10
Updated: 2010-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 03:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystery spots are often not all that mysterious to a mushishi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a house on the edge of true

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Spook Me! Challenge 2010. Prompt: http://pics.livejournal.com/xsmoonshine/pic/000kg6ba

There was once a message centre for mushishi in the forest, on the outskirts of a quiet village. People came and went, passing requests, information, messages to be sent on to one mushishi or another via the uro-san sleeping in the silken cocoons that hung in rows from every beam.

There was a fire, that caught too fast and spread too far, destroying so many cocoons it took the better part of a decade to restore communications with some of the more reclusive mushishi, if anyone remembered them. The caretaker and her family were all smothered in their sleep by the smoke invading their rooms in the residential wing attached to the message centre. For a long time, it was believed that the uro-san were all destroyed in the blaze.

It was eight years later, when Ginko brought a replacement cocoon to a colleague - only just remembered when someone wanted to consult with him on his particular field of study - that Ginko saw and asked to examine the man's obsolete cocoon. It had turned brown and cracked almost to the secret space inside on the night of the fire when its counterpart in the message centre burned. The other mushishi having no use for the damaged cocoon, he agreed to let Ginko have it. Ginko sold the cocoon to Adashino the next time he passed through Adashino's village, as a curiosity, and thought nothing more of it.

Perhaps two years afterwards, Adashino happened to mention that he had been finding dried leaves in his study where he stored his collection of mushi artefacts, though he kept the window closed. They were always near the old cocoon.

When Ginko finally comes to examine the abandoned remains of the house, it is mostly by chance. He is on his way to see a woman living in the next village about her chronic mushi problem - holes keep appearing in her roof, letting in the rain. The mushi themselves are harmless and easily dispelled, but they are fond of the pigments she uses to dye the fabrics she weaves, and she is less careful than she might be, as the mushi make her work brighter and worth more.

Ginko stops, planning to spend the night in the part of the house not gutted by the fire, and seeing a scorched tag with the name of a mushishi he knows, remembers Adashino's cocoon. He puts down his travelling pack, and _looks_.

It is an ordinary house, shadowed by twilight. The paper and other more fragile elements of its structure are mostly gone where not frayed into cobwebby wisps. Any soot and ashes remaining from the fire have been washed away by the rain. There are no cobwebs, no muddy tracks that a wild animal from the forest beginning to invade the edges of the house might have left. There are some old things left by the previous inhabitants - old lamps, a teapot, a tattered blanket.

It might well have been abandoned recently.

Ginko bends his head briefly to light his cigarette, and something scuttles just out of sight. There is a sound that might have been a child's cry or fox calling from the forest outside.

There is an abandoned ragdoll on the ground. It looks old, well-loved. Recently cleaned and mended.

Ginko turns his head and looks out for a moment; when he turns back, something is subtly different that he cannot describe for certain. Perhaps some of the objects lying about are not in the places he saw them first, perhaps the shape of the shadows are not the same.

Ginko spends the night outside instead, though he comes back a few times to study the house afterwards.

* * *

The Karibusa house has a file on the old message centre. It is not kept with the other records of triumphs over and destruction of mushi used to bind the shima in the main library. All information on mushi is useful, if only as a cautionary note.

 _... having lost the sanctuary of their cocoons, the displaced uro-san seem to have drawn part of the house into the strange_ other _space they inhabit or travel through between cocoons instead of seeking new homes. Visitors will find that the positions of small objects tend to change every time they look away or blink, due to the shy mushi's tendency to slip away when disturbed._

According to reports from locals, much as mushishi travelling through the uro-san's tunnels have mentioned, sometimes echoes from other parts of uro-space can be heard - voices of those pulled in by accident and lost to the world, the sounds of footsteps and more strange, unidentifiable sounds.

Still it remains a more stable part of uro-space bordering our world and can serve as an important rest-stop for mushishi making use of the uro-san's tunnels. Caution should be taken in approaching any enclosed spaces in the house, however, as a startled uro-san may pull one in unexpectedly, and even with a proper understanding of the rules governing this space, one may still become lost inside forever.

* * *

There is a house that you will find nowhere on any map of the region, whether it is a document provided to official census takers or a hastily scrawled sketch for a confused traveller. It lies on the outskirts of the village, half-reclaimed by the forest. No one lives there.

From time to time, a villager will call on a passing mushishi to examine the house. No serious matter, just to check if anything harmful has taken up residence in it, because one worries about the neighbourhood children who play near it, you understand. Because sometimes there are sounds- Well, and there were rumours...

Generally the mushishi takes note of nervously clasped hands, fearful darting eyes, a tremor in the voice; nods and agrees to look at the house. There isn't much to see. The house is not unknown among the mushishi: the Karibusa family has a record on it, but it is kept in the ordinary collection, not the collection of tales about the destruction of and triumphs over mushi that bind the shima.

The mushishi in question takes a cursory look, enough to tell that nothing has changed particularly from the details in the records, noting the flurry of shadows just out of the corner of the eye, and tells the villager, no, it is just a haunted house, and keep the children away from it. It is not safe. And the mushishi moves on, and the villager weeps. Faces and names change as the years pass; the story remains the same, because children are children and will try to explore the house anyway or in spite of what their parents tell them. Most of the time they do come out safely, if a little shaken. When they don't, their parents will hail the next mushishi to pass by, and ask them...


End file.
